


React

by quaffanddoff



Series: Give_Satisfaction [5]
Category: Jeeves & Wooster, Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse
Genre: BDSM, M/M, Masochism, POV Bertie, Pre-Relationship, Sexual Tension, Wax Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:06:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21666397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quaffanddoff/pseuds/quaffanddoff
Summary: Jeeves has a thing for hot wax; Bertie discovers this by chance.
Relationships: Reginald Jeeves/Bertram "Bertie" Wooster
Series: Give_Satisfaction [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1561192
Comments: 3
Kudos: 36





	React

How do you react, reader, when you’re in pain?

Now, I know on the surface it seems silly to be asking a reader a question. After all, I am writing these words in May of 1929, and you could be reading this at absolutely any point in history after that. Not to be morbid, but I may not even be around anymore to hear your answer. Even if I am still kicking, you may not be able to find me in order to tell me. I can usually be found in England or France or the United States, but you may be anywhere, even Germany or Tunisia. 

But I'll let you in on a closely-guarded secret, dear reader: I'm actually a lot more clever than I'm often given credit for. In many ways, it's a good thing, because it means I rarely disappoint people: keep expectations low and you will always meet or exceed them. If you give people too much to look forward to, there's always the risk you'll fall short of their image of you.

Take my man Jeeves, for example. I and every right-thinking person I know expects incredible, impressive things from him because of his long record of doing such incredible, impressive things. He's different from you or me though, because he always lives up to those impossibly high expectations. But he is the exception that proves the rule.

Anyway, I mention my under-rated cleverness here not merely to brag, but to make a point: that _I don't expect you to answer me_ , reader. That would be foolish. I only ask this question so that you'll think about the answer privately in your own head as you read this story, which will give you something of a glimpse into my mindset at the time all this took place.

Back to the original question: how do you react when you're in pain? The unpleasantness of pain is universal (at least, I used to think so), but one's reaction to pain is idiosyncratic. Some people are stoic heroes who never reveal a trace of their inner agony; others are tender wimps who cry out at the mere thought of a slight discomfort.

Have you got your answer in your head yet, reader? No? I'll go first then. Bertram is somewhere in the middle of that scale, and if he’s being honest, probably a tad closer to the yelping wimp side. I won't apologize for it; this is pain we're talking about, not the taste of Brussels sprouts or the suitability of china patterns! I don't bally like pain and I don't see why I ought to pretend that I’m too tough to want to avoid it.

There, does my admission make you feel safe to open up and be honest? This technique worked on some other people I asked, you know. I asked my pals down at the Drones. I asked old school chums. I asked some guests at dinner. After this particular recent incident, I went on a dashed asking spree, of which you, dear reader, are the penultimate stop.

This particular recent incident is in the way of being what you might call the flux of this story. No wait, do I mean the crux? The redux? It's some kind of ux or another, I'll have to check with Jeeves. 

What a coincidence: Jeeves happens to be the main character in the story of this p. r. i. Then again, sometimes I suspect that, when it comes to Jeeves, nothing is really a coincidence. Even if it seems that way from the outside, you can be sure it's only because he subtly arranged things to look that way.

On the evening of the p. r. i., Jeeves was subtly arranging things, as I mentioned he does. More specifically, he was arranging candles in my new candelabrum. I had purchased this marvelous item from an antiques shop earlier that day, and I could tell from Jeeves's manner immediately that he did not approve. I called it resplendent, he called it ostentatious; that's how I knew I was truly speaking to the real Jeeves and he hadn't been replaced with some kind of impostor or clone. His unwavering conservatism in the face of fruity _objets d’art_ was actually the cause behind me lucid dreaming once: I dreamt that I brought home a tartan waistcoat and he adored it, which tipped me off immediately that this could not possibly be reality. I realized then that I was dreaming and spent the rest of the dream trying to fly.

Anyway, as I say, Jeeves was setting up the candelabrum for a dinner party I was hosting that night. I was helping him because items of which Jeeves disapproves are usually not long for this world, so I wanted to spend a little quality time with the thing before it met its end in some unfathomable yet inevitable way. A paragon like Jeeves, of course, is an expert candle-arranger; a blot like Bertram, of course, is no such thing. Somehow I managed to tip over a lit candle and unfortunately, Jeeves's hand was below it, both figuratively and literally in the line of fire.

These questions of pain and reactions thereto have so far been waiting in the wings, making last-minute adjustments to their costumes and taking final glances at their scripts; finally it is their cue to take center stage. When you're in pain, reader, do you wince? Do you curse? Do you flinch and draw the affected body part back instinctively? Do you sharply reprimand whoever caused that pain and encourage them to never harm you this way again?

If you do any of these things, you're like me. I actually tried it myself just this morning as an experiment: after ensuring a few moments of absolute privacy, I purposefully spilled a little hot wax on my own hand. I reacted by doing pretty much all the things listed above, with a heavy emphasis on the cursing, and a lesser emphasis on the castigation, seeing as I had no one to blame but myself.

If you do none of those things, however, maybe you're more like Jeeves, in which case I must congratulate you, for that is always a good way to be. That is not to say, however, that I understand you two. I don't see why a person would react the way you both apparently do: why you would hiss gently rather than curse coarsely. Why you would move your hand _toward_ the source of pain rather than away from it, seeking more. Why your dark, dilated eyes would flick up to the person who had inflicted this upon you, and why those eyes would be filled not with rebuke, but with gratitude.

As we've already established, I know you can't explain it to me. I write this to entertain and enlighten you, you most Jeeves-like reader, not to understand it myself. You can't explain to me why, when the wax splashed on his hand, Jeeves shivered as if chilly, despite the fact that the candle had accumulated a good deal of the boiling hot liquid as it burned. You can't tell me what he was stopping himself from saying when he bit his lower lip. You can't shed some light on why he waved off my profuse apologies, or why, for the rest of the evening, his eyes kept drifting to the burn mark on his own hand as if it were a prestigious prize he had won.

I may not understand this sort of reaction, but I cannot claim it doesn't exist, for I have seen it with my own eyes. I once had a front row seat at a magic show wherein the magician chappie performed all kinds of impossible-looking tricks mere inches from my nose. Just like this incident, it resulted in a baffled, bewildered Bertram, wondering how in Hades the stunt had been pulled off, keeping himself up late at night in futile contemplation, searching for an answer, long after the spectacle was over.

As I briefly mentioned earlier, you are the penultimate party to whom I pose my question. The ultimate, in this, as in all things, is Jeeves. I don't know how he'll react when I bring this up later tonight. His inexplicable reactions are the subject at hand, after all.

Hopefully, he can explain to me why he reacted the way he did. For, if he can explain why he liked receiving that pain so much, then maybe he can also explain why I liked giving it so much. And even if he has no answer to all that, maybe he’ll at least agree to try it again, so that we might find out together.


End file.
